Michael Nazmy Sr., left, a liver transplant recipient, talks with Dorian J. Wilson, a professor of surgery at New Jersey Medical School and the director of the school’s Healthcare Foundation Center for Humanism and Medicine.

Photography:

Nick Romanenko

In the medical world, doctors are often seen as untouchable. They undergo years of rigorous education and training, and many make life-and-death decisions in their work every day. As a transplant surgeon, Dorian J. Wilson says he has always felt humbled by such responsibility—but he also noticed the arrogance and detachment it brought out in some of his peers.

“I say that humanism is the golden rule on steroids—‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’—and I take that to heart,” says Wilson NJMS’82. In 2004, Wilson became director of the Healthcare Foundation Center for Humanism and Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, a unit founded by a generous grant from the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey. More than a decade later, he is still in that post, championing kindness and humility in medical care.

Wilson selects a small group of humanism fellows each year, and those students spend the next four years working on service projects and learning to provide sensitive, human-centered care. In the future, Wilson says he’d like the principles he advocates to reach even more—ideally all—medical students.

“I’d love to see this become a standard part of training for each medical specialty,” he says. “We might even get to a point where you go into a doctor’s office and see a humanism certificate on the wall up with the diplomas.”

An accomplished surgeon who helped perform the first liver transplant in New Jersey, Wilson has seen firsthand the difference human-focused care can make—and not just for the patients. “One of the greatest things about humanism is that it’s reciprocal,” he says. “When I give that respect and care, I also get it back. It rewards the physicians just as much as the patients.”